2008/07/21

iPhone is sold by Softbank which was one of the newer mobile career in Japan. According to a research conducted by GfK Japan, the sales share of Softbank at electronic shops was 19% on 7/10 (the day before iPhone) was 50% on 7/11. On 7/11 and 7/12, 67.5％ of the mobile phone sales was iPhone 3G, according to GfK.

You can see further data on CNet Japan- the blue column on the bottom is NTT Docomo, which always had more than 50% of the sales shares- but on 7/11 and 7/12, it became 31% and 40% accordingly. Red column just above Docomo is Softbank Mobile. NTT Docomo announced that they will start selling iPhones too.

iPhone was on sale on 7/11, but at Softbank Omotesando shop, people started to line up 4 days before the sales, and on the day of the sales there were around 1500 people waiting for 15 hours or so. This is the photo I have taken when I visited the line after joining the iPhone-Night event. The line had already around 1,000 people at midnight when I got to the end of the line. The lines were organized- as you can imagine from the fact how Japanese people are used to lining up in big queues-. They had lining up rules- for example, people had to ask for toilet tickets when they leave the queue, and come back within 30 minutes, etc.